Carbineer Archive

Well here's my thoughts on these changes after a few hours of play, from a carbineer and partial BH perspective. Note that these observations are all from PVE not PVP.

1) Actionshot 1 & 2 . So far apart from giving the target a bleed on the action pool these moves are now useless. Before that changes it was possible to knock a standing target to prone, which was a great help for any melee players in the group, this is now not possible. From whatI have seen the posture change lasts about a second and is completly useless. Also before the changes actionshot used to slow the target even if the posture change failed, this also no longer seems to happen.

2) Fireknockdown. Even when this works now my opponent stands straight back up, and the dizzy effect automatically ends. Before the changes I could fire knockdown on say a stormtrooper and sure he would stand back up, but with a good change he would fall over again from still being dizzy. Again this move is now almost useless.

I have also noticed that the timer seems to kick most times regardless of wether the posture change/knockdown worked or not. For example on several occasions I hit some stormtroopers with knockdown, and they were not knocked down or dizzy, but I was still unable to affect them with another knockdown shot. So either the counter is kicking in after the first shot regardless of if it worked, or the effectiveness of these moves has also been reduced.

In my opinion these changes are needed for PVP but maybe with a shorter timer, 10 to 15 seconds, and not needed at all for PVE. The Carbineer has now become the most inefective of the ranged attack classes. We have the lowest damage and highest HAM costs. We can not to the devestating attacks of a rifleman, and even most pistoleers do more damage than a carbineer.

My preference is for these changes to be completly removed for PVE. As a carbineer I am supposed to be able to provide some level of crowd control, this is no longer possible as I have no way of stopping an opponent for longer than a second or two. I can't kite as 95% of opponents move faster than I do ( Note I am a novice ranger as well), this includes NPC's. I can't spam of enough special moves to take down an opponent before they reach me as carbine special move HAM costs are so high. So for a class that already had problems, carbineer now has even more. Most of our high end special moves are area effect, GREAT we get to set of a whole lair of creatures with no way of controlling them now.

If the changes are not going to be removed for PVE then maybe carbineers need some/all of the following :

a) Lower HAM costs for our special moves. At present these are killers, after say actionshot2 and 4 or 5 crippling shots I am usually down to a low enough HAM level to be incapped in one hit. Currently even white con opponents have to much HAM for me to take down with this number of shots.

b) Focus more of our special moves on the action pool. All of our high damage specials affect a random pool, with the exception of the legshots and even leg shot 3 maxes out at about 500 damage with any carbine except for laser.

c) Higher damage on our weapons. I have one of all of the carbines except for CDEF, and the only one that has a max damage of higher than 200 is the laser, which is nota particularly effective weapon due to it's wild variances in damage and super high HAM costs. For example maybe the Elite Carbine should be 150 to 200 damage with AP2 whilst retaining it's current HAM costs.

d) Slow down some of the opponents so we at least have a chance at kiting.

In summary carbineer is not unplayable, but is now very close to it. There were very few Carbineers before these changes, I think there will be even less before long unless something is done. I'm going to stay with it for the moment, but unless we get some big carrotsnow we've had the huge stick I don't know how long for.

Solth

Note I am crossposting this to the SWG discussion forum as well

Ok, after a few more hours of play some more thoughts.

Thinks don't suck quite as much as I thought, but are still pretty bad.

Overall the timers are probably to long, and the posture change effect does not last long enough. I have spent most of the morning tortur hunting on Talus, and get incapped taking out most lairs (torturs and tortur bulls con white to me), but have only died once, so maybe this is acceptable, BUT posture change and knockdown only last for 1 second each, this is not long enough. If they lasted for 5 seconds say, we may have a chance as we could posture change and hit normally for about 10 seconds, then knockdown and hit normally for about 10 seconds, only leaving us 10 seconds where we have to stay out of the way. Which should be survivable.

Also, because of the inability to keep multiple targets at a distance, most of our high level specials are pretty useless when you are solo, who wants to set off the crowd when you are unable to keep them away ?

The changes are ill-conceived and badly thought out.

Frankly I don't have time to be a beta tester for them.. they should spend allweekend trying these nerfs out themselves... then they can see how much it impacts your enjoyment and fun.

Anyway, I've dropped carbine skill in favour of pistol.... mainly because I am advancing the creature handler tree because without any means to control aggro groups I just spend more time running, incap'ed, running, deathblowed, running, running, running, running *sigh*

This probably suits them just fine.. they want us to drop skills and re-learn stuff to keep the cash rolling in.

This nerf really peeves me off. I levelled to 1-1-0-0 Swordsman.. dropped it. I levelled to 0-0-1-1 Carbine... dropped it. Dropping skills left right and center because of nerfs and broken classes.

The only thing in CHG (Creature Handler Galaxies) that hasn't been nerfed is... you guess it: creature handling.

Good luck carbineers. Now that I am 80% of the way to Pistoleer I can't see myself coming back.

you forget, ch's WERE nerfed. they can't have 3 rancors out anymore. only one rancor, and a grand wrix. or 3 creatures that add up to a cl of 70. (well, that's master ch's...those that don't master can only have 1-2 pets equally cl of 60).

they lost a third of their profession when they were way too overpowered/unbalanced. we lost over a third of our profession when we were the (imo) closest to balanced of any of the combat professions.